Dead Youth, or, The Leaks by Joyelle McSweeney


Dead Youth, or, The Leaks
Title : Dead Youth, or, The Leaks
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 193395924X
ISBN-10 : 9781933959245
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 90
Publication : First published November 15, 2014

Drama. Poetry. Winner of the 2013 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. In this farce set on a hijacked containership on its way to Magnetic Island, Julian Assange attempts to "reboot" a troupe of DEAD YOUTH--teenagers from all over the globe who have died in violent circumstances from sweatshop labor to environmental poisoning to war--but must grapple with two other would-be hijackers: a young Somali pirate and a female Antoine de St-Exupery. Described by its author as a "badly- wired allegory," DEAD YOUTH, OR, THE LEAKS brings to manic light the veiled violence that makes life in capitalism possible.

Dead Youth, or, The Leaks Reviews

  • Janice Lee<span class=

    This was a reread in its final form as I had the opportunity to read an early version and blurb the book.

    Here is what I wrote for my blurb:
    Dead Youth, or, the Leaks, is the shocking gaze upon the most beautiful and obscene gesture that is survival itself. This work takes as truth the statement that violence is such stuff as dreams are made of, that genocide can be converted to a legible surface, that oppression can be exhalation, that knowledge can be devastation, that violence can be humanistic and natural, staggering, immersive. In other words, Dead Youth is a farce, perhaps, but built on the exploitation and death and misery that becomes charisma and complication and sacredness. Heavy, yet easy to consume for its beautiful and profound images, indigestible, yet productive and rapacious in the indigestion that it produces. This is a work like none other. Let the destruction of the world become the rhythm of your life.

  • Alex

    I know I'm supposed to think this is enlightening or creative or intelligent or whatever but it was just too freaking weird for me. Props to the author for creating something so different, though. Objectively I can see that McSweeney is doing some game changing things in this play. But I cant imagine watching this performed. It is just too odd for my tastes, I'm sorry.